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San Ramon Valley students took the top places in a first-ever countywide competition for young entrepreneurs after advancing through the challenge to be among the 10 finalists who recently showcased their work to judges.
Dougherty Valley High senior Fatimah Hussain took the top prize in the inaugural “Contra Costa Shark Tank Youth” competition for her budding business Workout Wizard, with Monte Vista sophomore Ronen Jain coming in second for his app ElderSafe. Bella Vista Elementary fifth grader Archit Kundu rounded out the top three young entrepreneurs for his business Experimental Kids.
The winners were named following the competition’s “Finalist Pitch” event on Feb. 6 at the Lafayette Library, during which the 10 finalists out of the approximately 300 competitors presented their businesses and answered questions from the five-judge panel.
“Being young is the best time to be an entrepreneur,” said Maya Hammerman, founder of the competition and president of the Campolindo High School Entrepreneurship Club. “We don’t have mortgages, children or other big responsibilities. Young entrepreneurs are empowered to learn and make mistakes, while having direct responsibility and ownership for a business they created.”
“Ultimately, promoting entrepreneurship helps drive innovation, create jobs and boost our local economy,” she continued.
Along with Hammerman, the judges of that night’s pitch event consisted of Marqueta Inc. founder Jason Gardner, PG&E CFO and controller Stephanie Williams, Girls Crushing It founder Roxanne Christophe and former thredUp president Anthony Marino.
The 10 finalists were judged based on their enthusiasm for entrepreneurship, the presentation and viability of their businesses, and how they intended to use the prize money.
“From the moment I got the finalist letter to the day I presented on the Contra Costa Shark Tank’s stage, the entrepreneurship journey has been extremely rewarding,” Hussain said. “To win the first-place prize is a dream come true, and I hope to continue inspiring fellow youth entrepreneurs to follow their passions and never give up. The best time to build a business is now, so what are you waiting for?”
While providing a presentation on her business Workout Wizard at the finalist event, Hussain said that she had been inspired to develop the product as a way of contending with the lack of personalization in online fitness and the pain and injuries that can result.
Hussain described the app as a “tool that helps improve home workouts using computer vision.” It allows users to select from a catalog of exercises, with a computer vision AI feature detecting which joints are affected by an exercise and providing feedback on form and posture.
“For example if you’re doing bicep curls it’ll detect your shoulder, your wrist and your elbow, and based on the movement of your body it’ll detect whether or not you’re doing the workout correctly and give you specified feedback of what you have to do to improve with that form,” Hussain said.
As winner of the competition, Hussain received a $1,000 cash prize that she said would likely be entirely invested into developing the product further and preparing it to accommodate more users.
“All of it is basically going to go back into actually building the technology and the model, because I’m currently running on the free plan of the current deployment service, and I know that the more people that start using it, obviously it’s going to start like lagging out might glitch out because I’m on the unpaid plan,” Hussain said. “So I’d be putting all that money into expanding the storage and making sure that the feedback that it’s giving is really on time and it’s able to track efficiently and continue working despite the amount of people using it.”
Jain’s second-place ranking earned him a cash prize of $500, as well as what he described as valuable insight from judges on his app aimed at increasing at-home safety for seniors and reducing injuries sustained by falls.
“I’m beyond thrilled to be one of the winners of this competition after the countless hours I’ve spent perfecting my app,” Jain said in an announcement. “It was super exciting to get direct feedback from the judges and attendees about my business and how they would use it.”
During his presentation on Feb. 6, Jain pointed to a one in four chance of seniors sustaining falls annually, with one in five of those falls posing the risk of a severe injury, leading to more than $50 billion being spent annually on related medical costs.
“We need a simple way for seniors to easily improve the safety of their homes where the majority of falls happen,” Jain said. “That’s why I built ElderSafe.”
Jain described the mobile app as a “personalized safety companion” and “one-stop shop for improving senior safety at home.” The app enables users to create profiles with details about their age and physical capacities, along with a questionnaire about each of the rooms in their houses. The app’s algorithm then produces a list of safety hazards and suggested changes, ranked based on the severity of the hazard posed.
“If I win today I plan on using the prize money for advertising and marketing costs,” Jain said during his presentation. “This includes targeted advertising on the app stores and social media to seniors and their caretakers.”
Kundu, who earned a $250 cash prize as third-place finisher, also emphasized the competition’s value in helping him develop experience and confidence in his product Experimental Youth.
“Contra Costa Shark Tank is a great opportunity and winning third place gives me the confidence to take this business to the next level and make STEM learning fun for all the kids (5-12 years old),” Kundu said. “Also, it was a learning experience to present my views in front of such great judges and such a large audience.”
Hammerman said that the event had served as a “wonderful culmination” of her work developing and implementing the competition over the past year.
“The 10 finalists did an incredible job presenting their businesses to the judges and community members at the sold-out event,” Hammerman said. “They have inspired many young people in our county to explore entrepreneurship.”